Sunday mornings with Father Jerome
It's Sunday morning and my brain is jelly. In a week I'll be completely unplugged and unreachable in my idea of paradise and I am dying to get out of here. My great pals at My Out Islands recently produced a video about my beloved Cat Island and watching it isn't helping me concentrate on what I need to get done this week.
They did a fantastic job and it really captures the off-the-beaten path spirit of the place. Cat Island and the rest of the Out Islands are everything The Atlantis Resort is not. The Ministry of Tourism refers to the Out Islands as the real Bahamas and I can't agree more. Life's hard out there and as a visitor, the payment for the hardships endured is a nearly hallucinatory quiet.
That video's thrilling too in that I recognize everyone who's in it. Tony Armbrister owns the residence where I stay and Captain Tom lives next door. I find it irresistible too that they show some scenes of Cat Island's glamorous and exciting night time life. Well it is glamorous and interesting if your concept of a terrific time is a guitar and a bonfire on the seaside.
The video would not explain the story of Father Jerome and the Hermitage thoroughly although. The Hermitage is the name of the destroy at the summit of Mount Alvernia (elevation 206 ft!) the hostess is walking around toward the end of that video.
The Out Islands of The Bahamas maintain their history orally and what follows is the tale of The Hermitage as it's been told to me. I actually have scoured the Internet searching out more facts on the man embodied in those stone systems, however regrettably, I suppose the tale of Father Jerome and his Hermitage exists simplest in the overdue night time memories of the people of Cat Island.
The Hermitage become built via a man from Ireland as soon as named John Cyril Hawes but recognised later as Father Jerome. John Cyril Hawes changed into an architect and Anglican Priest who got here to The Bahamas in 1909 by way of way of Australia to build church buildings for the Church of England. In Clarence Town on Long Island, he oversaw the construction of what have become his final Anglican church, the Church of St. Paul. Something befell to Hawes all through that construction mission and exactly what befell is misplaced to records. What is understood is that as quickly as his Anglican church become finished, Father Hawes converted to Roman Catholicism and began to observe for the Roman Catholic priesthood. He entered the seminary as Father John Cyril Hawes and he left as Father Jerome.
Once ordained, he sailed lower back to Long Island and broke ground on a Catholic Church in Clarence Town. Father Jerome's Church of St. Peter was finished in 1939 and nevertheless stands in sight of John Cyril Hawes' Church of St. Paul.
Father Jerome's Church of St. Peter, Long Island, The Bahamas
Father Jerome then sailed onto Cat Island. He set approximately without delay to build the nevertheless-status Church of the Holy Redeemer in Freetown. Shortly after its final touch he commenced production on his Hermitage, that is wherein he could stay out the closing of his days in seclusion. Father Jerome died on the age of eighty in 1956.
The Hermitage, as it's become known, is a monastery in miniature. Father Jerome constructed it with the aid of himself with stones he carried, separately, to the summit of Mount Alvernia. To climb up the stairs he reduce into the hillside, to follow the Stations of the Cross he carved into his nearly vertical strolling path, to stretch out on the stone cot where he slept is to appearance deep into the man or woman of a man. It's no longer feasible to stroll away unaffected. Because the Hermitage is located thus far from whatever, some of his personal consequences are still up there. The Tabernacle he carved and painted sits just where he left it on a small altar. His inscriptions, in Latin and Italian, are as legible nowadays as they have been when he carved them.
Cat Island seems to have solid the equal spell on Father Jerome because it has on me. Every time I go back, I can not shake the concept that I ought to one way or the other just drop everything and move conceal out on an island hillside somewhere in the Atlantic. But then I go searching at the entirety Father Jerome built and realize that I just do not have it in me. I'm no longer fabricated from the same stuff. So I cross back over and over and I listen to the memories and I surprise on the land and I sit down and I watch and I simply let it's.
OK, who is geared up for a number of my vacation pix?!
This is looking down the footpath Father Jerome used to hold up the stone from which he constructed his Hermitage.
I am looking up behind the Hermitage from approximately 3-quarters of the manner up Father Jerome's course.
The remaining step on the path functions a very last word earlier than getting into The Hermitage right, "Weep no longer for me however for yourselves and your youngsters."
The Hermitage. The bell tower nonetheless has Father Jerome's bronze bell in it and the tower's connected to his one-room, one-pew church.
This is me status at the rear of The Hermitage. Father Jerome's church is hooked up to his living quarters and meals storage rooms.
This is certainly one of Father Jerome's majolica plaques it truly is been mortared into the wall of his church. In Italian, it reads "Praised be to you Lord via the moon and stars."
When Father Jerome knelt to hope in his church he faced a window and right here's what he noticed.
This is the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Freetown, Cat Island. It turned into the final church built by means of Father Jerome.
Father Jerome's paintings suggests a really strong Moorish have an effect on and it's unmistakable in this detail shot of the Holy Redeemer Church.
The Narthex of the Holy Redeemer Church is adorned in primitive frescoes. The frescoes have been painted by way of Bahamian villagers beneath Father Jerome's supervision. They are fading now and I think it is a rebel that someone taped up a home made welcome sign.